


Red, White and Blues in the Skies

by thedenouement



Series: beautiful things [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Clexa Week 2018, Day 5, F/F, Fourth of July, Hamptons, Rivals in a Secret Relationship, Smut, Upper East Side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 20:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13842078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedenouement/pseuds/thedenouement
Summary: The "We've known each other since the fourth grade when you transferred schools and stole my crown and have been competing over spelling bee's and Valedictorian titles among the gossip mills of the Upper East Side ever since and somewhere along the way we became fuck buddies but I think I'm actually falling in love with you" au, in which Clarke and Lexa attempt to navigate each other against the backdrop of their last summer in the Hamptons and feelings are messy things.





	Red, White and Blues in the Skies

In the fourth grade, Lexa was infatuated with one Clarke Griffin.

To the tight-knit gossip circles of the Upper East Side, the Griffins were a family flung out of space, from the money steeped streets of Mercer Island, Seattle with a daughter who wore the plaid of their school uniform better than the other nine year olds in their grade whose limbs were lanky from pre-puberty growth spurts – Lexa among them.

Her parents made a splash in the social scene easily. “An investment banker,” Elizabeth St Clair-Woods had told her husband about Jake Griffin, pinning earrings to her ear while Lexa watched, enamoured in the glamour of watching her parents get ready on Saturday nights. “You might want to make friends, darling.”

Michael Woods had hummed at his wife’s musings and continued threading his tie under his collar.

At school, Clarke made a similar impact in their insular worlds. A pretty blonde thing from the other side of the country, Clarke was exotic goods. She told them about the rain in Seattle, because although they holidayed in the Hamptons and on the white sands of Cancun, Seattle wasn’t familiar. She told them how she lived on the island – not an actual island, she explained to her throng of listeners during recess, it was attached to a city by bridges but it was pretty when it was sunny people had little jetties if they lived by the water, with boats “like the Hamptons,” she said, to which the girls _‘oh’_ ed in recognition.

“There’s a new girl in my class,” Lexa had regaled Anya with this information after school. The girls’ parents were friends, which was why Anya told herself she hung out with a fourth grader when she herself was a Freshman, Lexa liked to think she was fond of her.

“Oh yes?”

“She’s pretty,” Lexa hummed nonchalantly, sniffing at her new scented markers – they had recently come into vogue within her age cohort and though Lexa didn’t see the use in them (they were pens after all, not perfume), her mother had let her buy them to keep up her reputation. Anonymity was not the trait of a Woods.

“You like her,” Anya had smirked, to which Lexa shook her head.

“I don’t,” she insisted, “she’s a girl.”

Later, Anya liked to tell her she was a raging lesbian from the beginning.

Lexa didn't know why she was thinking of Clarke as she pondered over the outfit choices she had strewn out on the bed full of frothing pillows and comforters – a romper, a sundress, the wrap dress from Italy this past Spring.

Actually, that was a lie, she was always thinking about Clarke. The way her smile was irritating and her hair was never unstyled and how she wore the outfits Lexa wanted to wear just as well as Lexa did, if not better. Her eyes were too bright and the mole above her lip was _frustrating_ and she was perpetually flanked by her entourage who looked reproving when Lexa walked by with Anya when the older girl was back from Yale.

In short, Lexa was no longer infatuated with the girl who had swooped in at age nine with her innocent looks and stolen the crown from Lexa’s head. But the brunette truly didn’t know when it had gone wrong. She had been on top since pre-school but suddenly, flanked by Octavia Blake and Raven Reyes, Clarke was gathering followers with scented stationary and pretty smiles.

Lexa on the other hand, valued loyalty above else, prizes would be awarded handsomely to those who defended her honour – even at age ten and in knee socks Lexa had her father’s diplomacy – but their battle had only gotten more vicious over the years. Flip-flopping over who got to sit in the coveted lunch spot when they got to middle school and who would over perform on student council. They had had rival Valedictorian speeches drafted out at fifteen and though two incidents in the principal's office had driven them to underhanded actions and snide gossip rather than full out cat-fights in the halls as they entered high school, the pressures of finals and surprise pop quizzes in stupid Mr. Moore’s class only intensified the rivalry between them.

Most days, their peers watched with bated breath.  

She decided on the Italian wrap dress and raked the top strands of her hair back, picking up locks between her fingers to and fastening them into a style that was crafted as to look effortlessly beautiful and spritzed Chanel onto the column of her neck, descending stairs barefoot with her heels hooked on her fingers.

Back from Europe, Anya’s parents were hosting the first soiree of the summer, which, conveniently enough, was next door to the Woods’ and Lexa called a _‘see you over there’_ from the vaulted ceilings foyer to where her parents’ room was at the top of the double staircase. Holding the wall, she slipped her heels on gathered her phone, lipgloss and slipped down the side of her house, traipsing across the lawn and gravel drive to where there was a gate connecting the two properties. She entered through the dining area.

“Knock, knock,” she called, drifting through the opened French-doors. Anya’s mother appeared from the kitchen where she was directing the caterers handling the alcohol.

“Lexa, darling,” the woman brightened, “I don’t think I’ve seen you since last summer, how’s school treating you? Anya tells me you got your Yale letter?”

They exchanged pleasantries and Anya joined them a moment later with her makeup done, snagging a drink and they watched the lawn fill up from the porch, sipping champagne and commenting on outfits and the scandals of late, who was found sleeping with whom. The Griffins arrived with fanfare, Clarke was adorned by Octavia and Raven and Lexa turned her nose away, somehow finding it across from Clarke an hour later, studying the way the neckline of her dress dipped agonisingly low and how her hair hung around her ears, fluttering like a frustrating distraction. She was tipsy, Lexa thought, two glasses in to a bottle of Dom Perignon and reaching for a third as Lexa set her glass on the tray. She was making to sneak away across the lawn to where she knew the pool house would be quiet and she could quell the rising headache she thought she felt coming listening to the girls she shared her classes with squeal about Finn Collins and how they were going into the village the next week where a new bar had opened up – the place to be according to Raven Reyes.

“Better watch it,” she hummed, loud enough for the group to hear as she passed by Clarke’s ear, words lofty with self importance, “I’m not sure Stanford accepts _‘drunk’_ as an extracurricular.” She didn’t stop to hear the low _‘oh’_ the other girl’s – mystery was the secret to keep people thinking about you – and was slipping through the doors into living area of the pool house, darkened by the way the drapes were closed over the French doors the next minute.

The air was stagnant here, like it hadn’t been aired out since last summer when Anya’s family had had everyone over and the guests had overflowed into the guest quarters, and it smelt like chlorine and sunblock like it had when they were kids. Anya’s parents would let them sleep out here during the hot months when the ceiling fans spun lazily and they lay in the twin beds in one of the rooms down the hall not sleeping, having been dragged from party to party on the Hampton rounds. She supposed this place served a different purpose now.

“Took you long enough,” she snapped, impatient as she regarded the newcomer who she had heard enter by the creak of the door. She was antsy, irritated by the petty way her peers wanted to eek the last breath of carelessness out of the summer like it was their last supper. More so, she was feeling like things were changing too fast and too much, it all welled up, festering in her chest like an animal that needed to be released, years of preschool diplomacy and fighting over the steps in front of the arts building with the view of the courtyard at lunch, it scared her now that the things she felt were so real would now become insignificant.

Lexa could tell Clarke was feeling it too, she could see it in the irritated scoffed she gave in reply, could feel it in the way she cut the proverbial crap as the crossed the narrow space to crowd Lexa against the back wall, pressing impatient lips against hers, tongue’s hot, lips cold. The kiss was heated, something erratic and unexplained that they didn’t dare decipher because it felt simultaneously so delicate and complex. When they did this sometimes, illicitly in corners at parties or dark side bedrooms, Lexa was struck with how seemingly gentle Clarke could be in the throes of frustration and anger, she wondered if they hated each other really. But this time wasn’t like that. This time Clarke was sucking hard on her bottom lip, tugging fervently at the sash on her dress and Lexa didn’t want to think anymore because just the feeling of Clarke made her dizzy. So, she pressed back hard, slipping arms around her neck and curling hands into her hair, crushing the style between her fingers, pulling the blonde’s body against her, both of them sticky with ardent heat as Clarke’s leg slid between hers.

She gasped but Clarke was careless and defiant, rocking the knee against her crotch as Lexa’s teeth grazed her collar bone, sucking harsh bruises into the skin there. “Stanford?” the blonde hissed, “really? That’s a low blow, Woods, and you know it.”

“I can go lower.”

She went to transfer their weight, pin Clarke against the pool house wall and move down her body, but Clarke tsked coolly. She pressed into Lexa harder and when the two halves of her dress fell apart, she raked her fingers up the expanse of Lexa’s stomach, leaving thin scratches in their wake.

She sunk down Lexa’s body, cradling the twin points of her hips, pressing them hard against the wall. “Lace?” she growled, “really?” She nosed into the black lingerie Lexa had donned, finding the crotch of the brunette’s panties wet and clinging and smiled something crude, no doubt thinking of how malleable Lexa was under her hands, under the dry husk of her voice and the heat in her eyes and, god, it was true, but Lexa wished she would get on with it. Her nerve endings jangled with an anxious kind of energy and there was a pressure sitting at the apex of her thighs that was begging for release. Moaning inarticulately, she tangled carless fingers in the blonde’s hair and pulled roughly, guiding her to where she wanted.

“Pushy,” Clarke smirked, she hooked a finger under the side of Lexa’s panties and pulled. They clung to her, wet from the stimulation but Clarke was an expert by now, Lexa thought the blonde knew her body as well as she knew her own, and her panties were shucked down to her ankles easily, Clarke pressing open mouthed kisses to the skin at the inside of her thighs, smothering breathy laughs there.

Lexa, her hand at the nape of Clarke’s neck, tugged the fine hairs there warningly. “Shut –” Clarke pressed the pad of her thumb to Lexa’s clit and the brunette felt the air punched from her chest when the blonde replaced that thumb with her mouth.  “Shut up.”

Clarke hummed and the vibrations had her rising on her toes, scrambling for purchase on something concrete, something other than the complete euphoria she felt at the mercy of the girl between her legs.

Clarke’s mouth was devastating. Her breath hot, fingers fast, she worked Lexa up without issue, relishing in every half-aired moan and gasp that wrenched itself from the brunette’s chest, mouth stuck in a motionless _‘o’_ – unadulterated, guilty pleasure and she came fast. Too fast.

Clarke would tease her mercilessly and it would be hell, but, with a hand pressing Clarke against her, and the crook of her elbow flung across her eyes, watching stars burst behind her eyelids, Lexa wasn’t sure she cared.

* * *

“Thanks.”

Lexa sat up, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “Don’t mention it.” She surveyed their carnage – strappy heels and dresses spilt in a bread crumb trail from one side of the room to the other, the throw pillows tossed off the sprawling _‘L’_ sofa. They had been gone for longer than strictly necessary, people would ask questions when they joined the party now, but as always with them, it had become a cruel kind of competition, both pressing and pressing until they were huffing uncatchable breaths and overly sensitive.

Lexa twisted her hair into her fingers and held the locks up from the sweat slick nape of her neck, feeling Clarke – clothless and shamelessly sprawled back into the plush sofa – track her movements across the room. She slipped her arms through the silky sleeves of her dress and adjusted the two halves around her, tying the sash with easy fingers.

“So,” she winced as she tugged her panties up her legs and settled them at her hips, one hand on the wall to keep balance, her back to Clarke. “Stanford?”

Clarke hummed, utterly satiated.

“California – that’s,” she strapped on a heel, “not close.”

“Are you going to miss me, Woods?” Clarke propped herself up on her elbow, achingly smug.

“No! I –” Lexa cooled herself, vaguely jealous of how well put together Clarke kept herself as she re clasped her bra, making a show of shimmying her panties up her legs and Lexa wet her lips, telling herself to avert her eyes as the insatiable ache started back up. She cursed herself for it. “I’ll miss _this_ ,” she admitted, it was an important distinction – the action of receiving pleasure, not the person, she told herself.

“‘M sure.”

Clarke stepped into her dress and turned her back to Lexa, motioning for the brunette to do her zip up and Lexa complied, fingers lingering at the nape of her neck. It was too intimate, her body screamed at her, this act of cleaning up and straightening their clothes afterwards, it was supposed to be no strings attached but it felt strangely domestic in a way Lexa didn’t know what to do with. She abruptly let go and watched the blonde slip her heels on and straighten her hair out of her face. It clung to her a bit, blonde wisps at the back of her neck and around her hairline. Her eyes met Lexa’s and she softened, marginal and sweet, her hand lingering on the sharp line of the brunette’s jaw in a caress that made her dizzy. “I better go,” she hummed, and Lexa wondered if she felt it too – the inexplicable tug, the nausea. But then the side door _clacked_ and she was gone and Lexa felt as antsy and aching as she had before.

Anya looked at her askance when she re-appeared, smoothing hair down her back. Sipping champagne, the older girl appraised Lexa with the nonchalance of someone skimming through a rack of clothes, then when Lexa was squirming, she shrugged and tossed back another sip. “If I find stains on my couch I’m sending you the bill.”

“What?”

“Don’t play coy, Lexa,” Anya scolded lightly, “it doesn’t suit you.”

* * *

Lexa felt oddly aloof for the rest of the week, unsettled and bothered by her own head. She loathed it. Woods’ didn’t feel this way, they were steadfast and dependable, not languishing in the futility of their feelings. What would her father say?

She loathed it more that her mother, so usually absorbed in matters of larger consequence during these times – the dinner party rounds and afternoons and the club – noticed it across the mahogany dinner table. She set her silverware diagonally along her plate. “Are you okay, darling? You’ve barely touched your food.”

Lexa pushed her plate, the cutlery shuddered, she felt untethered and childish. “I’m not hungry.”

“Are you ill? I can have Maria make you a sandwich if you’re not feeling up to a full meal.”

“No thank you, I’m just tired,” she gestured between the adults, “carry on.”

Elizabeth eyed her briefly but ultimately went back to her conversation, wiping her mouth primly. “Anyway, darling, I was thinking of hosting the Fourth this year? Poor Clare hosted last year but she’s so wrung out chasing those girls of hers across the globe, I said I’d give her a break.”

Michael nodded. “Sounds good, tell me where to be.”

“I thought you might invite Jake and Co.”

“Clarke’s coming?” Lexa hated herself for asking but she had hoped to escape the girl for a little longer, if only to clear her head and the impending ache. She danced her fingers along her cloth napkin and thought frustrating things like when Clarke won the eighth grade spelling bee and how the blonde had received her Stanford acceptance letter before Lexa had gotten her Yale one. _Better_.

Oblivious to her daughter’s inner turmoil, Elizabeth hummed the affirmative, “if they aren’t required elsewhere. Oh, I assume the Blake’s will come too, though Aurora tells me Bellamy is in Greece for the summer with that girl of his, so we don't have to account for him.” She tsked fondly, “such a stray that boy I swear.” And suddenly Lexa was stewing in images of what felt like year-long summers and a shaggy haired Bellamy Blake pulling an eleven-year-old Clarke off the ground, scrape-kneed and swallowing tears, tucking her under his arm to walk back to the house where the adults idled in the garden of the Blake’s’ property.

“Excuse me,” the ferocity Lexa stood with stunned herself and she swallowed, “but I think I’ll go and lie down.”

* * *

The Fourth approached through a haze of spoken invites and dress decisions, lunches at the country club that morphed to cocktails overlooking the golf course that turned into sit down dinners in the restaurant with the Anya’s family and Lincoln, back from doing Anthropology at Dartmouth.

During this, Lexa was pulled bow string tight, like the right amount of pressure would sending her twanging off in some erratic, unknown direction, unbidden. It was disconcerting, this feeling, that she didn’t like being unpredictable, but then it was the day of and her mother was helping Maria hang crepe paper streamers over the entertaining area like a red, white and blue big top. There were themed tassel garlands classily adorning the house, place settings on the veranda and Lexa was wearing a blue and white striped linen romper, white sandals and red lip – understated and summery, her mother approved.

Completely out of character, Lexa attached herself to Anya when the older girl arrived with her parents, all model tall and exotic good looks. She wasn’t shy on the social scene, but Clarke was coming and it would be the straw that would break her, she knew it. As it was, Anya ribbed her when Clarke breezed in with envious confidence like their interlude earlier hadn’t meant a thing and Lexa pursed her lips. Champagne fizzed on her tongue but it was sour and she didn’t understand this. _Any_ of it. She didn't understand Clarke, or herself or why the thought of Clarke at Stanford had her cringing or why her fingers itched with the need to pull the blonde away from this, to take her somewhere quiet and kiss her in a way that meant something when she was inevitably slipping her shoes back on and picking her clothes up off the floor.

So, she held off, smoothing her fingers over the stem of her glass like she could smooth away the feeling.

Elizabeth sat them across from each other at lunch – typical of her mother, Lexa thought, meddling in things that ought not be meddled in, and worse, matters she didn’t know the facts of. The most she knew of Clarke and Lexa’s relationship was what she gleaned through Abby and Jake and as far as their parents thought the girls were friends.

(Lexa didn’t know what they were, but _‘friends’_ was entirely the wrong word for this.)

They ate in complete avoidance from each other, Clarke’s nose turned to where she was talking to the shaggy haired, Finn Collins, sweet enough but lacking _something_ Lexa had always thought. Regardless, he doted on Clarke and the blonde was lapping the attention up like it was a purposeful dig at Lexa. Lexa watched in sudden distaste for the food being served.

Clarke turned to her half way through lunch when the guy sitting next to Lexa had left to gesticulate wildly with his friends down the other side of the table, despite her oh so sunny disposition, Lexa thought, darkly. “You should try smiling more often,” Clarke commented, raking hands through her hair to ebb away the heat. “Might attract some interest.”

“Something you clearly don’t need any more of,” Lexa sniped, folding her napkin.

“Hm.” Clarke considered, then, “pool house empty?” It sounded like a challenge – felt like a challenge – like her answer would dictate everything important to her so she pulled her chin high and nodded, apprehension dancing in the pit of her stomach. “Guest house. Yes.” It was dangerous – flammable, like one spark and she would combust – but Clarke was excusing herself, a lingering hand on the back of Finn’s shoulder and a pretty _‘goodbye’_ and Lexa was doing the same, elegant grace and barely held control, nails digging crescents into her palms. Out of sight of the party, Clarke slid her fingers, into Lexa’s and her body felt like fire. Like Clarke _was_ the spark and Lexa was burning, over and over again without rhyme nor reason, torture to everyone but herself.

Clarke gave her a playful little tug and the brunette swallowed, chin higher as she slipped into the unlocked doors of the guest house. The curtains in the living room were open so Clarke headed for the stairs as Lexa maintained her dignity and tried not to follow like an obedient puppy, making it to the first landing, clean white wood and light spilling from windows on the first floor. Clarke crowded her against the wall there, navigating past the bannister so that the cool expanse of wall was flat at Lexa’s back. She sighed, unbidden.

“You don’t have to do that you know.”

“What?”

“Be so self-righteous all the time. You don’t have to pretend.”

“I’m not pretending.”

Clarke kicked a knee between her legs and Lexa _whimpered_. “I’m sure.”

The blonde’s mouth was hot on the column of her neck, her chest, her collar bone, it sent chills down the dip of her spine, she sunk into the embrace, curling arms into the other girl’s body, head tilted back into the wall and eyes fluttering closed. She fumbled with the tie of Clarke’s dress. “Don’t go.”

The words slipped past parted lips before she could swallow them down, back to the deepest recesses of her stomach and bring back memories of cafeteria shuns and Clarke’s smug face holding certificates aloft in middle school assemblies, everything she hated about Clarke but didn’t. She whined at the loss of contact when Clarke stepped back.

“Go?”

“To Stanford,” she clarified, breathless, “you’re only going to piss your Mom off, to go somewhere where she can’t get to you every day. I know you.”

“You know me?”

Lexa nodded, breathless, body keening. “You want to do pre-med, at Harvard like your Dad. Johns Hopkins for grad school.”

Clarke curled a lock of Lexa’s hair around her finger in a gesture much too intimate. “You know me.” It wasn’t a question anymore and it was thrilling.

“I know you.”

“And what about you, Miss Valedictorian?” She flicked the strap of Lexa’s romper off her shoulder with eyes innocent but mischievous, lips wrapping around the words like they were something filthy. “What do _you_ want?”

She was too cocky and Lexa heaved their weight back into Clarke, pressing the blonde against the wall and relishing the breathless sound she let out, kissing her filthy, loving, and breathless. She sucked on the blonde’s bottom lip until it was kiss-bruised, tongues sliding, teeth clashing, until Clarke put pressure on her chest and she pulled back, breathing feral. “You.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr if you want to ([@thealmostending](https://thealmostending.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thanks for reading! comments and kudos appreciated!


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